[olug] Server OS after Dec 31, 2003

[Christopher Cashell]

At Fri, 05 Dec 03, Unidentified Flying Banana Mike Peterson, said:
> Is anyone using the following for production servers now or planned for
> 2004?

I only personally have experience with one or two of these in production
use, but I've got friends and associates that are making use of some
others.  I'll just throw out what information I have on them, in case
you're interested. ;-)

> Trustix 2.0 -

No real experience with this distribution.  I have read that their goal
is a server oriented distribution.

> Red Hat Enterprise ES 3 -

I know a lot of people make heavy use of this in production servers.

> Red Hat 9 -

This also gets used quite a bit, although I would expect to find it in
somewhat less 'critical' places than RHES.

> SUSE Pro 9 -

I've got a former coworker who mentioned recently that they're
evaluating SuSE for use as a production server.  I don't think it's
actually going yet, but he said he expected it to go live soon.

> United Linux 1 -

I don't actually know anyone who's using this right now.

> Debian 3 -

I have personally used this, with great success.  I would make this my
first choice, and first recommendation, particularly for server use.
They have an excellent update mechanism (the best, really, with apt (and
I know that apt is available for other distributions, but it's more than
just the program that makes Debian great, it's the organization and
policies that help to ensure that packages work well together, and don't
have conflicting dependencies)) and a solid setup for security updates.

> Fedora Core 1-

I have only limited experience with this, but from what I've seen, and
even more from what I've read and heard, I would consider this a bad
choice for a server at this point.  It seems to be much too 'raw' and
untested right now.  Give it some time to settle down, and it might be
acceptable.

> Mandrake 9.2 -

Mandrake has really garnered more of a reputation as a Desktop
distribution, but I do know one or two people who are using it as a
server platform.

> Knoppix 3.3 -

Knoppix is really meant to be more of a "drop and run" distribution.
It's great when you need to test out Linux on a system, or check to see
if the hardware will be picked up automatically, etc.  But I wouldn't
use it as a server.  It's based on Debian, and if you want a "real"
server setup, you'd be much better off to go with that.

> or others not mentioned above?

A guy I know has recently been playing with LibraNet.  It's a Debian
based distribution with an easier installation, and a company behind it
providing support.  He's said a lot of very positive things about it,
although I've not used it myself, yet.

> When and if time allows I will put this in a PHP Poll page someday.
> Unless someone knows a link to a current poll page that is not passworded.

-- 
| Christopher
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| A: No.                                         |
| Q: Should I include quotations after my reply? |
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